Higher-Performing Schools and Districts

The National Center for Educational Accountability identifies consistently higher-performing schools in many states across the country. The schools identified by NCEA are those that exhibit outstanding performance across multiple grades and years. As the foundation of NCEA’s Best Practice research, the behaviors of these high performers are compared with those of average-performing schools in order to determine the unique practices of the most successful campuses. At the core of the NCEA identification process are two fundamental beliefs about the qualities of a higher-performing school:

1) Consistency: Higher-performing schools meet a more stringent set of criteria than the schools listed in each of the top comparable schools tables, some of which only appear successful in that single grade or year.

2) Fairness:

• Higher-performing schools are compared with other schools in the same state with similar schoolwide demographic levels.
• The analysis of performance focuses on students who have been in the school long enough for their achievement level to reflect the effects of that school.
• In the middle and high school analyses, the prior achievement of the school’s students is considered so the "value-added" of the school can be assessed.